Welsh Journals

THE FIRST MENAI BRIDGE PROJECT: POLITICS, COMMERCE AND COMMUNICATIONS IN WALES, 1782-86* THE events surrounding the construction of Telford's suspension bridge across the Menai Straits are familiar to students of Welsh history.1 The bridge was a logical step in a systematic policy of parliamentary intervention designed to improve communications between London and Dublin. Such improvement was called for after the passing of the act of Union with Ireland in 1800, which brought Irish members to Westminster who complained loudly of the inordinate delays in the journey from their native land to the seat of government. Accordingly, in 1801 the secretary of state for Ireland, Charles Abbot, commissioned the engineer John Rennie to survey the Menai Straits and submit a plan for a bridge. But the scheme was abandoned the following year: Rennie's estimate of £ 290,000 was a phenomenal sum that could not be spared in wartime. In 1810 the question was re-examined by a parliamentary committee set up at the instigation of the Post Office. The Post Office understood the necessity for government action if any improvements were to be made to a road system whose maintenance was consigned to selfish turnpike trusts and impoverished parishes. The committee recommended in 1811 the adoption of a plan by Thomas Telford for a cast-iron bridge of 500-foot span at Ynys-y-moch (the site of the present bridge). Yet no government money for the improvement of communications in north Wales was forthcoming until 1815. Made in response to pressure from Sir Henry Parnell and a group of Irish M.P.s, an act of that year granted £ 20,000 for the repair of the London-Holyhead Road and established a board of parliamentary commissioners to supervise the execution of expenditure. In 1817 Lord Liverpool's administration set up the Exchequer Bill Loan Commission as an instrument to tackle the recession that followed the end of the war. Through its finance of a programme of appropriate public works, the Commission was intended to stimulate trade and relieve unemployment. It therefore provided a method of financing a bridge. Nicholas Vansittart, the chancellor of the Ex- chequer, instructed Telford in that year to draw up plans for such a project. By February 1818 Telford's design was ready. But when preparations commenced in August, so great was the local opposition 1 For a recent introduction to this subject, see M. Hughes, 'Thomas Telford in North Wales, 1815-1830', in Donald Moore (ed.), Wales in the Eighteenth Century (Swansea, 1976).